This time let's follow-up with a selection of yet-more truly
creative online comics, some serious space dramas, others satires or comedies.
Many offer humorous insights as they delve into science, space, the future… and
human nature. You'll find star-spanning voyages, vividly portrayed aliens, frequent use of faster-than-light travel (FTL), but …. no superheroes here!(And yes, I have hereby destroyed your productivity for the next two months!)Many of these talented webcartoonists are dedicated to updating
their works daily or weekly, offering their stories and artwork for free online. You can support your favorites by subscribing to
their websites, pledging on Patreon (many provide exclusive bonus materials to donors), or
buying their collected works.

In no particular order, this is just a selection of the marvelous stuff out there...

Brewster Rockit: Space Guy, created by Tim Rickard, is a ‘satirical,
retro-futuristic comic’ which often parodies popular culture and science fiction films,
books and TV shows. The comic follows the humorous misadventures of the crew of
the R.U. Sirius space station, led by the brave but not-too intelligent Captain
Brewster Rockit and second in command Lieutenant Pamela Mae Snap. In their journeys through space and time, they
encounter hazards from aliens, killbots, monsters and mind probes ... along with with a multitude of puns. Example: After our many missions to the Red Planet, "Mars has hit us with a restraining order."

Outsider,
by Jim Francis, is a full-color, beautifully illustrated “starship combat space
opera.” Set in the 2100s, humanity has ventured out to the stars, only to encounter
alien refugees fleeing war between the galactic superpowers Loroi and Umiak. With
little information at hand to base their decision upon, humanity must decide: which side should earth ally with? When
the starship Bellarmine finds itself caught in enemy crossfire, a hull breach
sends Ensign Alexander Jardin drifting in space -- where he is picked up by a
Loroi ship. As the outsider aboard the alien ship, he slowly begins to understand this
telepathic, formidable, all-female crew -- and gain insight into earth's place in the cosmos. Then he finds himself in a unique position to save humanity....

Quantum Vibe,
by Scott Bieser. This sequential science fiction webcomic offers some real
substance. The story begins five hundred plus years into the Space Age on the
orbiting city, L-5. After a doomed relationship falls apart, our fierce heroine,
Nicole Oresme, becomes technical assistant and pilot to Dr. Seamus O’Murchadha,
inventor of electro-gravity, who needs help with his plan to delve into
“quantum vibremonics.” Their adventures through the solar system include
escaping assassins, diving into the sun’s corona, visits to Luna, Venus (terraforming
underway), Mars, Europa and Titan. Earth is ruled by large corporations and
genetically divided into rigid social castes –and even branched into genetic subspecies, multi-armed Spyders and Belt-apes. Libertarian
references abound but not inapropos for the setting and future. I’m impressed with the spec-science in the series, as well as tongue-in-cheek references to SF stories, including… Sundiver and Heinlein.

Freefall,
by Mark Stanley, a science fictional comedy which incorporates a fair amount of
hard science; it has been running since 1998. The serialized strips follow the comic
antics of the crew of the salvaged and somewhat-repaired starship Savage
Chicken, with its not-too-responsible squid-like alien captain Sam Starfall, a
not-too-intelligent robot named Helix, along with a genetically uplifted wolf
for an engineer -- Florence Ambrose. Their adventures begin on a planet aswarm
with terraforming robots and incoming comets. The light-hearted comic touches
on deeper issues of ethics and morals, sapience and philosophy, orbital
mechanics and artificial intelligence.

Drive, by
Dave Kellett, is a weekly humorous sci fic comic set a few hundred years in the
future. At war with aliens, Earth and much of the galaxy lives under the rule
of “La Familia,” a second Spanish Empire (based in Madrid). Humans were able to achieve FTL travel after they 'found' an alien engine –
the Ring Drive – but the Continuum of Makers will
stop at nothing to retrieve their invention. Of course, La Familia keeps the Drive's secrets closely
guarded. The blue-inked strip follows the voyages of the scout ship Machito -- its
Drive piloted by an alien with amnesia -- as they set off on a mission to save humanity, even while
serving a distant Emperor they despise.

Galaxion,
by Tara Tallan, is an episodic space drama, following the Nautilus-shaped Galaxion,
an interstellar survey starship operated by the Terran Space Association
(TerSA), under captain Fusella Mierter. The crew is to test a new jump engine which
will enable them to travel through hyperspace (the last ship, the Hiawatha, to
test it disappeared). The drive casts the Galaxion into a parallel universe; a
desolate post-apocalyptic Earth is not the one they left behind… The first few
chapters are a bit slow, developing the crews’ relationships, but the pace
picks up when they discover the wrecked Hiawatha on Earth, a band of humans
living underground, afraid of what’s out there…

Terra, a full
color, sci fi webcomic by Holly Laing and Drew Daily, set in the year 2309, in
the midst of an interstellar war between the United Earth Coalition and the
humanoid alien Azatoths. The only survivor of an Azatoth ambush, Gray O’Shea is
rescued by Agrippa Varus of the Resistance; he joins the rebels in their desperate crusade to
end the war. Viewed as terrorists by the
UEC, they must also avoid the deadly Shadow Cabal, who have enslaved and
subdued large swathes of the galaxy. When the resistance shoots down a UEC
fighter attacking their base, the downed pilots begin to question if they are on the right side. Good
action sequences, complex plotting and character development.

Mare Internum, by Der-shing Helmer, is a recent addition, a full-color science
fiction graphic comic, just started in 2015. This near-future drama follows researchers in a scientific
habitat on Mars, as they gather data to prepare for the first extensive human
colony. Their geologic explorations include delving into the planet’s interior... where they uncover some
surprising (and improbable?) secrets of Martian history. Yet, extended isolation has pushed some members of the crew to the limits
of sanity, with Dr. Mike Fisher contemplating suicide, as he is notified that he will be sent back to earth. Lavish color illustrations,
with a sense of whimsy, and added scientific detail below the panels.Electric Sheep: I have often cited the work of Patrick Farley, one of the hugely under-appreciated treasures of paneled storytelling and vivid webcomix art. His Electric Sheep site offers several series that you'd swear could not have come from the same artist, all of them brilliant. "Spiders"takes an alternate reality view of middle east wars in a world of super-transparency. "Don't Look Back" is psychedelic far future space opera. And "Apocamon" will show you what the Book of Revelation is about - in manga style - vividly making clear why we should ensure that no one who prays for that raving prophecy to come true should ever get their hands on nuclear weapons.

Always Human, by walkingnorth, is a webtoon (set to music). In this future most people regularly use body-modification
technology to alter their skin, hair or eyes, to cure illness or enhance focus
or memory. A reflection on genetic engineering, body image,
beauty, and gender identity, as well as what it means to be human. The comic tells a tender love story between two young women; one a specialist in virtual reality, the other has a highly sensitive immune
system, which rejects the widely-used nanotech mods. She gathers confidence to be different and stand outside the norm of her society. And yet... "No matter how technology
changes us, we’ll always be human.”

A Girl and Her Fed, by K.B. Spangler, tells the tale of a young woman, a journalist intern, who
converses regularly with the ghost of Benjamin Franklin. When she discovers
that she’s been placed on a government watchlist as a possible terrorist threat, she angrily confronts the federal agent assigned to her. That agent - the Fed -- is one of five hundred
who were given cybernetic brain implants (the Pocket President program). These
implants are now malfunctioning -- and projecting an avatar of George W. Bush;
Ben Franklin’s ghost is able to reprogram the implant. It turns out that these agents have been
dying under suspicious circumstances. The Girl and her Fed team up to get to the root of this deepening mystery…. and unravel a complicated web of political intrigue and conspiracy.Storm and Desire, written by
Scotto Moore, art by Evelyn Dehais, is a brand new sci fi/ fantasy webcomic
following three women whose fates collide, as they seek to uncover “the secret
history of the multiverse.” Check back to see how the story unfolds…

Comics on philosophy, books and ideas:

Unshelved,
by Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes, is a daily comic that simply celebrates
reading, books, literacy, and libraries. The characters are mostly librarians
and the setting is often… a library. Literary references abound, along with
light-hearted humor about book clubs, overdue books, bookmobiles, bureaucracy,
research… and the joys and challenges of reading. The Sunday full-color
full-page editions became the “Unshelved Book Club,” which highlight recent
books and graphic novels. Here's the one that focused on Startide Rising!Existential Comics, by Corey Mohler, is “a philosophy comic about the inevitable anguish
of living a brief life in an absurd world.” One of the more intellectual comics
around, this one delves into philosophical ideas of Ancient Greeks, from Socrates to Plato and Zeno, as well as more modern thinkers, such as Camus, Descartes, Kierkegaard and Kant. Comics touch upon topics ranging from metaphysics to Marxism, empiricism to Stoicism… plus additional insight if (for some reason) you don’t get the joke! For example, in The Adventures of Fallacy Man, the masked man interrupts arguments with cries of Appeal to authority! Ad hominem!! or Slippery slope!!!

Lunar Baboon,
by Christopher Grady, features “a half man/half moon monkey trying to make
sense of it all,” chronicling the trials of a middle-aged father struggling
with depression and anxiety and parenthood – with references to Star Wars,
Harry Potter, supervillains, modern politics and the ordinary problems of daily life.

Drewford, by Damon Xanthopoulos, is a humorous comic that features talking (uplifted?) waterfowl. Drewford Duck, fired after an illustrious career making infomercials, becomes head copywriter in the advertising world (Mad Duck?). In a take on the Odd Couple, the fastidious Drewford shares his apartment with his disorganized brother Ormlu Duck, as they struggle in a modern world with complications from technology, apps, flashmobs, social media, gay ducks, duckpics... and more.

Some ended comics worth reading:

Crimson Dark, by David C. Simon, a serialized science fiction drama that ran from 2006 to 2012. Gorgeously illustrated with 3D graphics rendering detailed starships (capable of FTL jumps) and space battles (with lots of vivid explosions). Set in the 27th century, it follows a tough but troubled Commander Kari Tyrell. Sent on a reconnaissance mission, Kari’s Republic fighter is attacked; she is left drifting in space and rescued by privateers of the antiquated Niobe spaceship. When they return to base, Kari is taken into custody, accused of treason, as her past returns to haunt her… Officially declared dead, she casts her lot with the crew of the Niobe (led by Captain Vaegyr Ward), heading out to seek salvage and survive -- while avoiding pirates and hostile ships amid the treachery of a brutal war.

Digger, by
Ursula Vernon, was a fantasy adventure comic, which won the Hugo Award for Best
Graphic Story. This black and white comic has the tagline: “A wombat. A dead
god. A very peculiar epic.” Our heroine, Digger, a talking wombat, got very lost when
digging an “unnecessarily convoluted” tunnel, and surfaced at the feet of a
talking statue of Ganesh the elephant god. Digger finds herself in a land far
far away… a strange world with only her pickaxe by her side, and predators
closing in. “Man don’t you know not to mess with a sleeping wombat? We swing
pickaxes for twelve hours a day. We’re like biceps with feet.” Along her quest
to find home, there are nods to mythology and religion and existential crises of
good and evil.

Starslip,
by Kris Straub, a science fiction comedy that ran from 2005 to 2012, sketched
in black and white. The serial is set in the future world of the 3440s, aboard
the IDS Fuseli, a decommissioned luxury battle cruiser, now a starship museum,
archiving cultural treasures, alien and human. They travel via a Starslip drive,
which allows them to slip between parallel universes, which seems to involve swapping with a duplicate
version of themselves. The crew, headed by a drunken ex-pirate, must deal with
orbital celebrities, time travelers, replitons, and aliens… as well as rival
museums, bureaucracy and paperwork. Pop cultural references and puns abound (they
are attacked by Infra-Redbeard.)

SpaceTrawler,
by Christopher Baldwins, was a sci fi comedy that ran from 2010 to 2013, set in
a galaxy governed by the collective Galactic Organizational Body (GOB). GOB has enslaved
an alien race, the telekinetic Eebs, forcing them to continue to create “all
consequential technology in the known universe.” Meanwhile, earth is still a ‘dark
planet,’ not having achieved notable space travel, or attained a seat on GOB. A group of six humans is
abducted, shanghaied into aiding Interplanetary Amity, an activist group aboard
the SpaceTrawler, in a struggle to free the Eebs.

There! Did I just decrease your work productivity by at least 10%? Remember to allocate your comix reading time away from video games! And not from doing good work, citizenship or spending time with loved ones!

44 comments:

Best scifi webcomic I've read in years: O Human StarMan invents android AI, learns to live in society that grew up after that where robots are everywhere and have rights.Start here:http://ohumanstar.com/comic/chapter-1-title-page/

I'm enjoying Questionable Content, which isn't a "science" comic as such, but it is set in a world that looks like ours except that AI is not just common but comes in diverse flavours. There's a small robot named "pintsize" with a permanently filthy mind, but one current storyline involves a large cage-fighting android trying to get out from under the influence of a domineering "mother" robot. Imagine Stephen King's "Carrie" as an eight-foot-tall armoured android that can fold, spindle and mutilate just about anything. The author has a second strip, Alice Grove, which is a more linear SF/Fantasy story strip.

By the way, a surprising addition to this is Questionable Content, a comic about ordinary life in Boston, but with a small twist - there's AI and robots in this world as well. And while the initial robots are small and amusing, we eventually find there are quite a few robots including those that appear quite human. And there's other technologies as well that we're given glimpses of over time.

This has taken some interesting philosophical turns of late, as Faye has started helping repair robots involved in an underground fighting ring (non-lethal, robot-vs-robot) and we also watch a military humanoid robot that is with Faye's help slowly starting to acclimate into society.

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The chap who did Spacetrawler is currently doing a scifi comic Anna Galactic concerning an alien world and humans stuck on the world for some unknown reason. While the aliens are sentient, the humans aren't quite sure how to communicate with them (though one of the aliens did manage to make a lasting psychic contact with the titular character). It's surreal and odd and quite interesting in its own way. :)

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Sunset Grill is set in a futuristic Earth that seems to be part Bladerunner, part Fifth Element, and maybe part Warhammer 40K. We've not seen any actual aliens (though they exist), but various offshoots of humanity, discrimination against cyborgs, corrupt cops, and even people trying to get out of the slums and get a proper education, while dealing with street criminals and the like. It's interesting, though the update schedule got kind of iffy for a bit.

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And there's Wandering Ones, a post-apocalyptic comic that is part sci-fi, and part mysticism concerning a scout from one of the native tribes that survived the synthetic plague that wiped out 99% of humanity, and is trying to prevent a fascist group from the American Midwest from conquering their high-tech allies, who are a democratic society in what was California.

The comic includes a lot of stuff on tracking and survivalism, and of course a dose of mysticism, but also includes fusion-powered vehicles, high-tech weapons, and more, so I figure it still qualifies as Sci-Fi. I mean, if Star Wars is, why not this? :D

* "given attempts to compare Trump and the current Republican movement to Fascism opens up a rather interesting door. Given that this is just another page from the Confederacy... does that mean the Confederacy was in fact the first example of a Fascist government seizing control? ;)"

I'd say that the first fascist government was the Qin dynasty: its emperor was a disciple of the proto-fascist (and number two beneath Socrates on my personal "Smother the bastard in the cradle as soon as I get a time machine" kill list) Shang Yang, and his minister Zhao Gao pulled what may be the first recorded Orwellian decree.

***

* "The very few who want all OUTCOMES equalized are monsters. Fortunately they are very rare. Most liberals want more equality of OPPORTUNITY"

Most liberals and left-wingers may not want to downright abolish differences in outcomes, but we certainly do want to massively reduce them. If no control toward outcomes is exerted, you end up with a situation where a tiny minority own most of the available wealth and resources.

It's not the case, but for the sake of argument, let's pretend that we live in a purely meritocratic world where all of the 1% wealthiest (who currently own more than half of the world's wealth) earned and deserved their position on top of the food chain: human nature would then drive many to rig the system and insure that competition was fixed to ensure that their own children -even the mediocre, the inept and the mad- continue to enjoy the level of material comfort they were raised in. A ruthless meritocracy will be sabotaged before its second generation of rulers come of age.

And of course, in reality, that's not the case: the upper-class is already riddled with inept heirs as it is: not controlling outcomes simply means allowing the ratio of inbred, slothful, entitled, arrogant morons with distinguished family names among the upper-class to keep increasing.

***

* "he's not saying the others are incapable of judging him because of their innate racial (or gender) characteristics. He's saying they're incapable of impartially judging him because he himself has already poisoned the well by insulting them."

And? He's basically openly stating a belief that's been an untold part of the privileged classes' identity for millennia "We mistreat, insult and injure those who aren't like us, therefore the smart thing is to assume that the others are untrustworthy, that they must want to retaliate and hurt us back"

***

* "I think a non-insignificant group of Americans thinks that racial tribalism is just the way things are, and that "political correctness" tries but fails to mitigate that fact.For them, the idea isn't to avoid judging the races, but to make sure that their own race maintains its position as top dog"

In other words, racists.Racism is often depicted as a set of beliefs which boil down to "Race X which I am a member of is intrinsically superior to Race Y which I don't belong to".It's not: racism is an intent: racism is being willing to deliberately harm people from a different ethnic background in order to preserve (or conquer) one's own group's dominant position, as well as the material spoils that come with it.It doesn't matter if that intent stems from misplaced faith in one's own ethnicity/culture/religion/whatever's intrinsic superiority, from a cynical malthusian calculus, or simply from petty jealousy because the new Arab neighbor got a fancier degree, prettier car, larger home and sexier wife: the end result is the same: racists end up supporting the demagogues who promise to use the power of the state to enforce the supremacy of their own group.

Dr. Brin, I loved the librarians' reaction to Startide Rising. It made me wonder if anyone has seriously proposed making it into a graphic novel.

I also loved how Fallacy Man got caught by the fallacy fallacy. Funny stuff. Thanks for pointing out so many interesting materials to add to my infinitely-expanding reading list. The nice thing about graphic narrative is that, while you might spend hours ogling the beautiful artwork, you can read the dialogue and absorb the plot elements relatively quickly. I think a graphic novelization of the second Uplift Trilogy might not work out so well, though. Some things are just better spun in words than conveyed through hybrid of words and pictures. Some of your other novels could be done well, though.

Laurent, it's been a long time since my years as a student of history, but I remember some impressions from the Fertile Crescent hinting at fascism long before the Qin Dynasty on the other side of the continent. Though the word only comes from the 20th Century, fascist tendencies are probably all over state-level social systems going back to the beginning. It's likely just that communication technology facilitated the questioning (and labeling) of state-level organization in ways that were truly unprecedented before.

I don't think we're really disagreeing or arguing about Trump. I wasn't denying that Trump is running a racist campaign. I was just pointing out that racism was the least of his sins in this regard, and that making the story about his racism actually lets him off lightly.He's basically openly stating a belief that's been an untold part of the privileged classes' identity for millennia "We mistreat, insult and injure those who aren't like us, therefore the smart thing is to assume that the others are untrustworthy, that they must want to retaliate and hurt us back

And the corollary to that is that only his supportive base (old white men) are "unbiased" enough to judge him, conveniently forgetting that that cohort is just as biased as anyone, just in the opposite direction. That's the meme I'm afraid will stick if we let it--that Trump supporters are unbiased, and only his detractors are biased.

From today's www.electoral-vote.com:In 2012, David Koch gave $1 million to help pay for the Republican National Convention. This year, he and his brother Charles are giving nothing and aren't even going to attend. Charles said this week that Donald Trump would have to change his stance on a variety of issues before he could support the Republican nominee. He specifically said that Trump's racist comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel are unacceptable. The Koch brothers were planning to spend $900 million on this year's elections, but Trump's nomination definitely throws a monkey wrench into the works.

So again, the Koch's don't want Trump as president. What does it gain them to financially support the Green Party and peel votes away from Hillary? There's a logical step somewhere that I'm missing.

@Larry - "The Koch brothers were planning to spend $900 million on this year's elections, but Trump's nomination definitely throws a monkey wrench into the works."

Oil at $50 or less threw a monkey wrench into the works. The main point of pouring money into elections is to ensure down-ticket races are filled with candidates who favor 'job creation' by securing preferable arrangements for extraction in one form or another. That gambit has run its course for now, but I also am skeptical they'd actually shift to the Greens (except to the extent that the Greens can peel off from Dems in those races - and thus are helpful for certain borderline districts, as Nader was).

@Laurent - I'd look to Egypt for the origins of fascism (perhaps the Fertile Crescent as well) - there's just something about putting the image of the Pharaoh in stone and projecting him as a living deity. That said, there's probably some precedent in many different cultures.

I disagree that germ theory requires higher tech, and is thus a cheat. Drinking upstream from the herd and keeping the latrines away from the residences (and knowing why to do so) hardly requires lasers.

As for the comics, the only ones I've added in the last several years came from suggestions here.

Consider for a moment: when the Big Bang occurred, it could have created a vast swath of primordial black holes. Well, what is the decay time for a black hole with the mass of a subatomic particle?

Might not these extremely small black holes have decayed within microseconds, releasing a large amount of radiation but also eliminating a large amount of gravitation which in turn led to the massive inflation of the size of the universe?

And thus might not other black holes, those the size of hydrogen atoms, be evaporating next, and thus reducing gravitation in the universe as they become energy as well... and thus allowing for an increasing acceleration of the expansion of the universe?

The entire range of dark matter and dark energy may in fact be explainable through primordial black holes and Hawking radiation as these black holes with event horizons so small they cannot be detected at distance except through their gravitation slowly "pop" and release more and more energy into the universe... and in turn accelerate the expansion of the universe itself.

All these efforts to use exotic physics to find mystery particles like WIMPS and the like may in fact be for naught as we look for giant ferns in a forest comprised only of trees. We seek something with magical thinking (because "ordinary physics" can't explain something so mysterious and magical as dark matter and dark energy!) rather than look for a more mundane solution.

Robert, I had a similar thought a long time ago, though I also considered that the Universe might have a whole lot more Black Dwarf remnants than previously thought. These would be even more difficult to detect than black holes, having no equivalent of an accretion disk or x-ray emissions to look for. I know I am a rank amateur where astrophysics is concerned, though, so I'll listen to what experts have to say. Even the best have turned down blind alleys before - which is why science always has to be seen as provisional, the proviso being that new data can lead to better models in the future. This is the colossal admission of human fallibility that makes science so much more believable than almost any other human endeavor, regardless of how the media chooses to portray science.

Thanks for your suggestion, Rob H. Food for thought. I've been trying to visualize the topology of the very early universe when time to transit the entire space was only microseconds before the "reentering" of energy, gravity waves, etc., on the "other side." In this very tight manifold, energy should not in itself cause space to expand. Yet your thought experiment is provocative. If light has mass, and mass turned into light, is the gravity preserved? Or does the mass of light not equal the mass of the hole? Is space (of the inflation) created by the difference?

Every time nowadays a black hole finally evaporates, does a sudden though smaller inflation of space also occur?

If an undetermined number of Black Dwarfs can dance on the head of a pin, then the Universe may also contain a near infinite number of Red Dwarfs ... but that's not the worst of it:

According to the BBC, European Council president Donald Tusk has warned that a UK vote in favour of Brexit "could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also Western political civilisation in its entirety".

@occam’s comic: (from last thread)Kessler syndrome is a more pressing issue for LOE. I don’t think it is likely that SBSP will be that low. In higher orbits there is more time to mount a defense against debris and if there is one thing SBSP should have in abundance for that defense is energy for lasers. Small orbit parameter chances turn hits into misses.

If you want to make a viable plan to harm US dominance in orbit, a debris shield isn’t the best I know. Too passive. A better plan would be to place mines up there using a cover story. THAT would be annoying, but only for a while. We’d beat that by flying more stuff than they have mines and shoot down any replacements they send once the war turns hot.

I’m not trying to be over-optimistic here. It’s just that this stuff has been considered and we’ve been working on beam weapons and ABM tech for some time now. No one is crowing about it yet and you probably won’t see much until it’s needed in a real war, but it is there and improving. There IS publically available info to be had.

As for costs, I’m not overly worried. We get crazy-stupid in surprise attacks on us. The gold will flow like rivers.

Robert,"Might not these extremely small black holes have decayed within microseconds, releasing a large amount of radiation but also eliminating a large amount of gravitation which in turn led to the massive inflation of the size of the universe?"

E=MC² baby. Mass-energy equivalence. From gravity's point of view, there's no difference between inertial-matter and energy, except the speed. And light is too slow to have powered the early inflationary period.

As for LR, conventional matter (whether red dwarfs, or brown, or black, or just dust and gas) has been ruled out but surveys of other galaxies. All baryonic matter produces secondary effects that can be measured. We're left with something-weird because all non-weird explanations have been looked for, and ruled out.

@Rob H: Baryons doing mundane things have been ruled out as Paul451 said. I think there is still room for them if they do weird things as well, but if you look for those behaviors, you might as well look for weird particles too.

The universe is probably stranger than we imagine. We've had to face this pretty much every time we get curious about anything.Get used to it. 8)

The constraint to remember is we think the inflationary period was super-luminal or that the speed of light was 60 orders of magnitude larger. I don't know which is weirder.

In keeping with current thread, 'Red Dwarf' refers to the graphic novel & the televised series.

And, as conventional matter has been "ruled out" ( but only in a mostly visual, dark, unenlightened & non-empiric sense) from current mass estimates of the Universe, may I suggest a few alternative theories based on Archimedes' Principle ?

(1) Estimated Mass of Universe minus Witnessed Mass equals displacement due to Divine Density plus an infinite number of non-baryonic (as in 'imaginary') particles dancing on the head of pin; OR

Why would the evaporation of subatomic black holes on a wide scale NOT cause the rapid expansion of the universe? The energy resulting from the loss of those super-condensed sources of mass/gravitation would need to go somewhere. So it inflated the universe.

The debate over whether or not dark matter is primordial black holes has been going on for a while. There are a multitude of claims about dark matter. None have been proven. The more that scientists search for the elusive dark matter, the fewer hiding spots are left... until finally it may become a disproved theory.

Primordial black holes are an effective method of explaining dark matter. Their loss through Hawking Radiation is likewise an effective method of explaining dark energy rather than creating an exotic superparticle or effect that just happens to push everything apart to fit what scientists see.

I used to believe in magic. In time I took a look at those beliefs and realized there is no proof. Instead, it was a desire to create order from chaos, to explain patterns and allow myself to believe the universe could be controlled on a fundamental level.

Dark matter and dark energy is magical thinking. It is taking effects that we see and assigning an imaginary element to it. This is not a bad thing - the Higgs Boson was magical thinking that led scientists to use mathematics to determine what the Boson would be like, and then scientific research to verify it.

But there are plenty of particles that don't exist. It seems increasingly likely that String Theory is a tangled mess of magical thought that may explain the universe, but is not how it actually works. Likewise, dark matter and dark energy are likely imaginary particles and aspects that can be explained by other methods. Instead of WIMPS and mystery energy pushing things apart faster and faster, more mundane explanations will likely be behind the universe and its mysteries.

Have been curling up with some lovely webcomics these last couple days. Brewster Rockit strikes me as a Futurama conceit, well executed and fun (as that show so often was). Mare Internum is a bit of a mind-frak so far, quite curious where it's heading, but wonderfully executed.Outsider, so far, looks fairly standard anime plot so far...tough space elven lassies?Trying Human also channels that oh-so-anime vibe, but as a rom-com sci fi romp, quite fun.

Meanwhile, a corner of my brain explodes every time some bastard takes an AR-15 and...proves that Republicans are stupid. One of the draft bills Dianne Feinstein tried to bring to the floor in 2005 had provisions banning assault weapon sales to anyone suspected of terrorist connection (a lower standard than probable cause for an arrest) - which the Republicans greeted with crickets in 2005. I screamed quietly at the time, got on a plane and left the country for many years (though my version of escape was to go straight into some of the uglier spots in the world and try to do something...).

@Alfred - "If you want to make a viable plan to harm US dominance in orbit, a debris shield isn’t the best I know. Too passive. A better plan would be to place mines up there using a cover story." Not exactly mutually exclusive plans. A 'debris shield' seems to be a plausible outcome of another strategy that gets disrupted, like space mines. Debris need not destroy satellites, merely wreck solar power arrays, and as I understand it, several orbits are getting pretty crowded.

Used to be that battles were reviewed by relative casualty counts - I'd imagine in wars of the future, they'll be reviewed in terms of resource cost. In most warfare, one need not build an insurmountable redoubt that cannot be taken, but merely raise the cost of projecting power into any single spot such that others will hesitate to do so. Unless those others are Mongols or Huns...

Personally, I'm disappointed that the proponents didn't adopt the term, "ether" to describe these systems. Funny how if you give something you don't understand a name that has already been debunked, a new term for 'mystery' is proposed. At the very least, they could have offered a cool Latin name for the stuff. "Quintessence?" Ack, them durn Greeks (who was it who wanted Socrates and Aristotle to be flogged?).

I thought that the gravitational "force" could be not exactly distance squared - maybe distance to the power 1.99999999???

Also that time could be changing - so that a second now was not the same as a second 5 billion years ago

But these are such obvious thoughts that the actual experts in trying to match the observed data to the theories are bound to have eliminated these possibilities before moving onto the weird idea of matter that only reacts with our matter by gravitation

The police seem to be walking back their statements. Of course, the one who pulled the trigger first was Muslim, which fits the narrative. Since this guy doesn't seem to have any Islamic ties, he will no doubt be labeled insane rather than religious or political. Still, it's good that the report mentioned the NRA bumper sticker.

Paul SB:The narrative on both incidents is chaotic. Now it seems the guy in the Santa Monica case was gay himself, and not targeting the gay pride parade, although that doesn't exactly stop begging the question of why he was driving around town with an arsenal. The Mareen case is even more baffling. Now it turns out he was a club regular, and apparently gay himself. If you combine this with his religious attitudes, and his history of violence and abuse, his record contracting to DHS and apparent diagnosis of bipolar disorder, you find this is a situation that is not going to have any simple answers at all.

One RNC consultant, reacting to Trump's remarks about how Mareen was the son of an immigrant, pointed out that four of Trump's children were born to an immigrant parent--as was Donald himself.

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May I recommend "Inhuman" by Icarus? It is, broadly, about a religious war in the 31st Century; but specifically, it's about the efforts of the two sides of the war to find a young man who may (or may not) be a genetically altered super-soldier. The story can be a bit confusing in the beginning (the protagonist, Grey, can be a rather unreliable narrator because he's on the edge of sanity -- as well as blind and horribly scarred. [He may or may not have been tortured while he was being experimented on.] Oh, and he's infected with a space plague that could endanger several species of the Good Guys...), but things start becoming clearer when he's put in the care of an alcoholic young alien charged with keeping him out of the hands of The Bad Guys.

is a scientist, futurist and best-selling author. His novels include Earth, Existence, The Postman, and Kiln People, as well as Hugo Award winners Startide Rising and The Uplift War. The Transparent Society won a Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Assn.